“Ultimate No. 2, Ultimate No. 2.” Grady said crisply. “This is Turkey 6. Do you hear me?”
“We read you five by five,” a dear voice said in his ear. “We have a message for you.”
“I am not authorized to receive messages,” Grady said. “I am merely reporting that we are approaching the lob point and are undamaged.”
A new voice broke in over Grady’s radio. He recognized it immediately. An involuntary shock went through his body. The voice he heard was that of the President. But it could not be. He glanced at the Fail-Safe box. The “go” signal was clear and reassuring.
“Colonel Grady, this is the President of the United States, your Commander in Chief. The mission you are flying has been triggered by some mechanical failure. I order you and the other planes under your command to return to your base immediately.”
Grady sat stunned, disbelieving. He did not speak. His hand moved toward the radio toggle switch, stopped three inches short. He looked at it. The hand dropped to his knee.
Grady looked at the navigator and then at the defense operator. They had also heard the message. Their eyes were fixed coldly upon Grady. He felt helpless. He was sinking. He wished he were somewhere else—anywhere else. He wanted to cry. His mind moaned a piteous complaint and abdicated; subconscious emotions were welling up within him and he was in their control. He reverted to childlike thoughts. He wanted God. He was a little boy who needed his mother. He wanted to dose his eyes-to dose out this nightmare and open them again as that little boy. He tried. He dosed his eyes. He opened them. No, it was true. The voice came back over the radio at him.
“Colonel Grady, I repeat. This is the President.”
Again the distinctive New England accent bored into Grady’s consciousness. But this time it had the opposite effect. His mind focused. He saw dearly it was an enemy ruse. How easy the President’s voice was to mimic, he thought, remembering the many briefing sessions in which this possibility had been discussed. His nerves steeled. He interrupted the voice briskly: “I am not authorized to receive tactical alterations by voice once past Fail-Safe. What you are telling me I have been specifically ordered not to do.”
“I know that, damn it, but this is—” Grady had reached forward and flicked off the radio, leaving the remainder of the President’s frantic plea dangling in space.
The War Room was frozen in mid-action like a collection of children stopped rigid in a game of “Statues.”
“Gentlemen,” said Cascio, ignoring the body of General Bogan at his feet, “I am taking over command of this post at the specific order of the President of the United States. He has long been aware that General Bogan is psychologically unbalanced and he specifically warned me to observe him closely. The negotiations which General Bogan has been conducting with Marshal Nevsky are not authorized by the White House and are the acts of a madman. By the direct authority of the President of the United States I now authorize you to take all orders from me.”
General Bogan felt a strange sense of wonderment. it was true, he realized dully, that the madman had a great advantage over the sane. Having only moments before walked up to the edge of lunacy himself, Bogan had an almost fatherly appreciation of Cascio’s sure intuition. The colonel was performing beautifully, with the marvelous sensitivity to audience which marked the great actor.
General Bogan climbed to his knees, then carefully came to an upright position. He moved slowly, careful not to provoke Cascio into striking him again. General Bogan looked around the room. There was a balance so delicate that it was almost palpable. Over the months General Bogan had come to know the personalities of the various officers and enlisted men in the War Room. Some of them already had the red of hatred and rebellion in their eyes. They would be willing to follow Cascio. The middle range, the officers who would serve long tenures as light colonels and retire as full colonels, were vacillating. The brighter of the officers, that small fraction destined for a rapid rise and a generalship, had already started to move. They were moving toward Cascio and against him.
But their movements were unnecessary. Out of the gloom of a far corner appeared two Air Force enlisted men wearing brassards and .45-caliber pistols. General Bogan had known that they were there, he had known it for months, but today he had forgotten them. They bad become like furniture. He watched with an awed regard for their capacity to remain silent and invisible for months and then to move with such relentless stalking skill. They came like ballet dancers doing a piece of practiced choreography. They flowed by each chair and desk and person as if this were a daily routine. They came up behind Cascio quietly and with an enormous confidence.
One of the airmen tapped Colonel Cascio on the shoulder. He turned and saw the brassard and at once started to turn his head and to scream into the speaker, but his hand was empty. The other airman, with a blow that was swift and precise, had chopped at Cas. do’s wrist. The speaker had flipped neatly into the airman’s hand. Cascio was screaming into an empty palm.
“Colonel, if you speak another word, our orders are to render you unconscious,” the first airman said, and his lips broke into a smile at the extravagance of the language.
“I guarantee you, Colonel, that we can do it quicker than you can speak the next word,” the other airman said.
Cascio had already fallen silent. In some way he iensed the end of his brief power. His face went suddenly lax. The sharp aquiline-profile which had been rigidly composed for hours now suddenly went idiot. It seemed almost to puff out. General Bogan turned away. He realized that Cascio had gone through the terrible temptation, and yielded-the temptation to which General Bogan had been exposed only a few moments before. The first of the airmen tapped Cascio on the elbow; and turned him with a robot docility. Bogan watched the man, Cascio, cave in as he walked away between the two airmen. By the time they reached the first exit Cascio seemed to be a shrunken, monkeylike version of the commanding figure he had been just thirty seconds before.
General Bogan turned quickly back to the touch phone.
“Marshal Nevsky, there has been a slight interruption in our operations here,” General Bogan said. The touch phone had been on continuously. “I am now prepared to give you the longitude and latitude of our bombers, in accordance with your earlier request.”
“General Bogan, I was aware of your difficulty,” Marshal Nevsky said. “We have had one or two problems like that ourselves. One cannot foresee every situation. I await your information.”
General Bogan quickly scanned the men in the room. His command was sure now. No need to be concerned about Handel or anyone else. Cascio had, in a perverse way, served his country. He had exhibited what every man —including Bogan himself—felt. His yielding to the insanely mutinous impulse had purged the similar impulses from the rest of them.
“Colonel Handel, I order you to give your best estimate of the longitude and latitude and the heading of all planes in Group 6,” General Bogan said.
Colonel Handel read off the longitudes and latitudes and his voice went directly into the touch phone.
Immediately the planes closest to the Vindicators began to regroup, to dose in. Now the fighters were flying at different altitudes searching for the Vindicators. The decoys were no longer effective.
Three of the Soviet fighters almost simultaneously linked on to the lead Vindicator. The Vindicator jinked, went into a dive, lost luminosity. So did the Soviet fighter blips.
“Marshal Nevsky, when the group is down to two surviving planes standard operating procedure is for those two planes to dive to the lowest feasible altitude and continue their attack as dose to the ground as possible,” General Bogan explained. “In this way they hope to escape your radar. The plane which your three fighters are now engaging is a defensive plane only. It has no bombs aboard. It carries only defensive devices.”
Bogan’s heart sank on hearing Nevsky’s voice. He suspected what the changed tone of the Russian marshal meant. The words from the translator were:
“Thank you, General Bogan, but we will try for a kill in any case.”
Even when filtered through the translator’s neutral voice the words carried the impression of mistrust. He knew what Nevsky was thinking. It was what any commanding officer would have to think in Nevsky’s position.
General Bogan turned wearily to the Big Board. The three blips of the remaining bombers were easily distinguishable from the Soviet fighters scattered in their path. No.6 bomber was clearly in the lead. As General Bogan watched, the configuration of Russian fighters changed slightly and veered toward No. 6. Bogan wanted to turn away. He knew the outcome. The fighters conveiged on No. 6’s diversionary run. Suddenly a green blotch supplanted the No. 6 Vindicator as well as the fighters around her. She was gone, but she had served her final diversionary function. She had feinted the Russian fighters out of position. The remaining two Vindicators were now almost certain to make it. As General Bogan watched they had shifted to maximum speed. At their present reduced
